Dade Police Seek Help In Nabbing Killer Of 4 Prostitutes

Homicide detectives on the trail of a killer suspected of strangling four prostitutes say they need the public's help to catch him.

"Someone must have seen something," John Farrell, Metro-Dade's chief of criminal investigations, said during a news conference at Metro-Dade police headquarters on Wednesday.

Detectives said they hope to find a witness who saw the suspect pick up a prostitute along Tamiami Trail. If not, they said, maybe someone who lives in one of the four residential areas where the bodies were dumped remembers a slow-moving car.

"The public's assistance is crucial," Farrell said.

Police have mounted an intensive manhunt to catch the strangler, even using female decoys along a stretch of Southwest Eighth Street to lure the killer into a trap. A team of investigators and analysts are on the case full time and a 24-hour task force has been set up. Its phone number is 471-8477.

Also, two agents from the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico, Va., best known as an analysis center in serial killings, are drafting a profile of the killer.

The strangler has struck four times since September. Autopsy results released on Tuesday confirmed that the lastest victim, Wanda Cook Crawford, 38, a drug addict and known prostitute, had been asphyxiated. The other three victims also were convicted prostitutes with drug habits, police said.

First to die was transvestite Lazaro Comesana, 27, found on Sept. 17. The body of Elisa Martinez, 44, was found blocks away on Oct. 8. Charity Fay Nava, 23, was dumped with letters painted on her back on Nov. 20, and the latest discovery came five days later, on Friday.

The bodies have been found in the communities of Westchester and Sweetwater, west of downtown Miami. The prostitutes worked a stretch of Tamiami Trail dotted by low-rent motels and strip malls.